Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Transcendental Meditation - deal or no deal

*Suggested listening - Chemical Brothers - Believe*

Besides being difficult to spell what is transcendental meditation (did you mean transcendental meditation? Thanks google!)

Normally I file this sort of nonsense into the "religioun" category, i.e a fluffy idea for sheeple looking for an emotional comfort blanket of unthinking conformity.

But then you see someone as interesting as David Lynch is a massive proponent and you have to look into it. Extoling the benefits of amazing creativity, bliss, yogic flying, a 12 inch pianist etc.

So, faithful reader, here's where it gets weird.

*The role of Skeptical Steve is played by your author in the following renactment of events*

Steve has recently finished reading a book called "Dreaming in Code" as techno inclined folk are want to do. In this book are many interesting characters, one of which is Mitch Kapor, a founder of the EFF, writer of Lotus 1-2-3, the list goes on.

Steve is looking for some evidence to confirm his suspistion that TM is a scam and stumbles across a site detailing reformed TMers and low and behold if one of them isn't a "Mitchell Kapor" then Steve does not like marmite toast for his brekky wecks.

Here is where Steve sees something interesting:

"Well, my experience was typical for my generation. I had gotten to college in the 60's and started experimenting with marijuana and psychedelics, fairly heavily. I had some distressing experiences with LSD. Bad trips. So I stopped doing drugs and then started getting acid flashbacks. I decided to give meditation a serious try to see if that could have some calming effect. I got hooked in to TM and eventually made the decision to go through advanced training to become an initiator, an instructor"

Steve sees more than a little of himself here, parks the TM bus in the Lulzpark and all is well with the world.